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Prepared for the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in association with Access/Middle East by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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To contact the Presidents Conference: [email protected]
In-Depth Issue:
Saudi Princes "Linked" to bin Laden - David Rennie (Telegraph-UK)
See also Confessions of a Terrorist - Johanna McGeary (TIME)
Peres, Barak, Sarid on Hamas's Deck of "Most-Wanted" - Khaled Abu Toameh (Jerusalem Post) |
News Resources - North America and Europe:
There have been signs for months, despite official denials, that Saudi extremists are traveling to Iraq to take on U.S.-led forces, Saudi journalists who monitor Islamic militancy say. Iraqi police Saturday said at least two Saudis were among more than a dozen foreigners and Iraqis arrested in connection with the bombing Friday that killed at least 85 at Iraq's holiest Shi'ite Muslim shrine. In recent months, Saudi fighters in Iraq reportedly have called friends back home and told them about successful operations in an effort to recruit more fighters. Khalid al-Ghannami, a Saudi writer and columnist, said two of his neighbors went to fight in Iraq. The younger brother, a teenager, was killed there and eulogized on a Web site as a martyr. He said the borders between Saudi Arabia and Iraq are porous. (AP/Washington Times) See also Saudi Crackdown Encourages Iraq Jihad, Clerics Say Saudi militants, facing a clampdown at home, are heading to Iraq for a holy war against the American "Satan," clerics and analysts say. (Reuters) See also Who Attacked the Najaf Mosque in Iraq? Maj. Rick Hall, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, offered three scenarios for those behind the attack: former Baath Party operatives working with foreigners, rivals of [religious leader Ayatollah Mohammed Bakir] Hakim within the Shiite community, and his former allies in Iran seeking "some sort of retribution." Many refused to accept the possibility that rivalries among Shiites were to blame. However fierce the contest for power, no Shiite could desecrate a shrine so sacred to the faith. More often, they pointed to loyalists of Hussein or Wahhabis, a Sunni Muslim fundamentalist sect dominant in Saudi Arabia with a history of enmity toward Shiites. In an intersection in nearby Hilla, a banner blamed Wahhabis. Underneath was written, "Revenge, revenge, revenge." (Washington Post) The Taliban, backed by new volunteers from Pakistan, are regrouping and steadily expanding their attacks in southern and eastern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials, Western diplomats, and captured fighters. Not only are American forces being attacked, but so are Afghan policemen, aid workers, and midlevel officials. (New York Times) News Resources - Israel, the Mideast, and Asia:
Meir Ohayon, an Israeli truck driver loading produce at the Gaza Strip town of Rafiah Yam, was shot and wounded seriously Sunday by Palestinian sniper fire from Rafah. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack. Five Palestinian mortars landed in Neve Dekalim in the southern Gaza Strip Sunday night, damaging some homes. Palestinians also fired an anti-tank missile at an IDF position in Rafiah Yam near the border with Egypt. On Sunday an Israeli Arab was moderately wounded when Palestinians opened fire at a group of construction workers building the security fence south of Kalkilya. Col. Shuki Rinsky, head of operations in the Gaza division, said in the past week, 14 Kassam rockets, 16 anti-tank rockets, and 72 mortar shells were fired at Israeli communities and IDF positions. "The Palestinian Authority is doing nothing to stop or thwart the terrorist activities," he said, adding, "An example of this is the Kassam rocket launcher found on Friday near a Palestinian Police position not far from the Erez crossing." (Jerusalem Post) Two Hamas terrorists were killed when IAF helicopters fired four missiles into their commercial van near the entrance to the El-Bureij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday. One of those killed was Abdullah Ali Ibrahim Akel, 37, a senior Hamas field commander involved in numerous attacks against Israel who, according to IDF officials, was driving to a nearby warehouse to pick up Kassam rockets when he was hit. Israel has vowed to continue targeting Hamas officials due to the failure of the PA to rein in the group, confiscate its weapons, and arrest those involved in Kassam rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli towns. (Jerusalem Post) The Palestinian Legislative Council decided to postpone the vote of confidence in the government of Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas from Monday to Thursday. U.S. officials have told the Palestinian leadership that if Abbas's government falls, the U.S. will withdraw its support for the road map and for an independent Palestinian state, Israel Radio reported Sunday. (Ha'aretz) The Palestinian public is no longer asking if the government of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is going to fall, but when it will happen. Its very raison d'etre was to achieve a cease-fire. During the weeks of cease-fire, the government was supposed to reorganize the Palestinian security services, conduct reforms in the government, and start implementing the road map. Abbas's government was weakened most not by its policy but by the growing feeling in the public that the government was not 100% loyal to the interests of the Palestinian people. Yasser Arafat helped quite a bit to strengthen that feeling. The public in the West Bank and Gaza is growing ever more suspicious that Abbas's government is serving foreign interests more than it is serving the Palestinians. Too many foreigners want the government to succeed: the Americans, Europeans, Egyptians, Jordanians, and even the Israeli enemy. (Ha'aretz) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
For three years now, acts of violence done in Allah's name have made terrorism and Islam almost synonymous, not just in Westerners' vocabularies but around the world. Who will rescue Islam from the jihadists who have distilled their faith to sacred hatred - of Americans, Christians, Jews, and the millions upon millions of moderate or secular Muslims who disdain this perversion from within? For some in the West, the enemy is not jihadists but all Islamists. Never mind that the vast majority of Muslims who promote their faith do so peacefully. Reformers deserve American support. But preventing the status quo from getting worse may be a more realistic goal of such help than winning "hearts and minds" for humanism, let alone making the Muslim world look as secular and democratic as, say, Turkey. The democracy Americans espouse remains popular in the Muslim world. American notions of equal treatment for women are less welcome. It is not up to Americans to rescue Islam. Non-Muslims can facilitate liberal reform. But it is Muslims, acting in diverse local circumstances, who will or won't break the cycle of jihadist demonization and naive denial that is ruining the image of their religion. Whether to rescue their faith is a choice only they can make. The writer is a senior fellow in the Stanford Institute for International Relations. (Los Angeles Times) Arafat still has the loyalty of 28,000 troops (and their commanders) who are paid by a security unit he controls. He uses Fatah's Central Committee and the Palestinian Legislative Council to block reforms: when Abbas's finance minister, Salam Fayyad, tried to force into retirement 600 of Arafat's elderly Fatah cronies, Arafat bullied the legislature into rejecting the plan. Arafat appoints governors and mayors, and maintains a personal war chest of $30 million a year, doling out cash to supplicants. Arafat named Jibril Rajoub, his former West Bank head of Preventive Security, to the previously unfilled post of national-security adviser. Palestinian sources say that Rajoub will likely preside over a new council that will control all 53,000 men in the security forces - and answer only to Arafat. That could sideline Mohammed Dahlan, who now serves as the director of Abbas's security apparatus. In remarks to Newsweek, Rajoub declared, "We need a united command and Arafat will run it." The Bush administration is furious. U.S. and Israeli officials believe that Arafat has supported armed resistance and winked at terror for the past three years. "By preventing the consolidation of the Palestinian security forces under Prime Minister Abbas, Yasser Arafat undercuts the fight against terrorism," a White House spokeswoman said last week. (Newsweek) The editor of the London-based, Saudi-affiliated daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Abd Al-Rahman al-Rashed, on Friday launched a scathing attack on the Palestinian Authority and accused its leaders of working for personal interests. Headlined "The Palestinian Leadership Must Go," Rashed wrote of "the Ramallah leadership": "Isn't it shameful that these are the figures dragging the entire Arab world into a struggle that they describe as 'central,' while, in its present form...it is no more than a personal farce?" He said the current Palestinian leadership will neither fight nor make peace. "This leadership wants neither a solution nor land; nothing interests it except its own personal battles." The Arab governments "are faced by a president who claims to be elected, and a prime minister whom he appointed but wouldn't give any powers." "It's time for the Palestinian leadership to realize that it must go, be it the leadership of Abu Amar [Arafat] or of Abu Mazen....There is no real leadership that bears responsibility and is ready to sacrifice its own interests and posts in order to accomplish the task for which it was elected....Is it with such a lame leadership that the Palestinians will free their land? Should we enter into conflict with the rest of the world for the sake of these individuals?" (Jerusalem Post) Observations: The Demonology of SE Asian Islamists - Michael Danby (Jerusalem Post)
The writer, an MP for Melbourne Ports, is secretary of the Australia-Israel Parliamentary Friends of Israel.
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